The wrestling team at Smoky has gone through so many changes this past couple of months, so I wanted to see how the managers were doing.

B’Elanna Sanders, junior, has been a manager since her freshman year.

“What made me want to become manager was my mom,” Sanders said, “She was in school and I wanted to see for myself what it was like.”

Managers do a lot for their team.

“We have to sweep and mop the mats, get the boys water, do stats for them when they wrestle, and anything else they need.”

When Sanders took the position it’s exactly what she expected.  

There used to be three coaches in total, including assistant coaches and now they’re down to one coach. Wrestling matches can get hectic and overwhelming easily.

The wrestling team has had a lot of adjustments to make because of this.

“Some managers are more affected than others. Me, personally, I’m not to affected but when it first happened it was a little stressful because it happened so fast,” Sanders said, “Things have gotten better, but for obvious reasons the wrestlers are taking it harder since it was their coaches.”

Jadyn Brieske, junior, became a manager this year.

“[Something I enjoy about being a manager is] probably how just great the community is, I mean we’re all like really close and we’re practically a family honestly.”

Shortage of managers would be the only thing she would change.

“A lot had to leave and so now we only have two,” Brieske said, “that is a little bit difficult to keep up with all the workload that comes with but other than that I love it.”

As a student sometimes managing between school and extracurricular can be hard.

“It gets a little hard to keep up with school work sometimes, just finding that balance.”

Just like Sanders, Briskie shares the same responsibilities.

Briskie was not able to make a comment about the coaches.

“It’s a really delicate situation with everything that was going on but I know that ours boys and the coaches and the managers, we’re all working really hard to just get on top of it and stay up.”